Tommy Thompson cheated investors in treasure hunt, jury finds

Wednesday

Tommy Thompson cheated investors, who never received a dime after funding his recovery of sunken treasure from a fabled shipwreck, a Franklin County jury ruled Wednesday.

The jurors awarded a combined $19.4 million in compensatory damages to the plaintiffs — $3.2 million to the Dispatch Printing Company and $16.2 million to a court-appointed receiver who represents other investors — after a three-and-a-half-week trial in Common Pleas Court.

In separate deliberations late Wednesday, the jury found that Thompson was not liable for punitive damages, which required proof that he acted with malice.

There was no visible reaction from Thompson, 66, as he sat in a wheelchair at the defense table. Now imprisoned and claiming to suffer from numerous ailments, he had become a celebrity treasure hunter after convincing some 150 Columbus area investors in the late 1980s to back what became a successful effort to locate the 1857 wreck of the S.S. Central America steamship and its cargo of gold off the South Carolina coast.

Thompson and his crew salvaged more than two tons of gold, silver and artifacts from a depth of more than 7,000 feet using innovative technology created by Thompson, a former Battelle scientist. The treasure was estimated at more than $100 million.

The Dispatch Printing Company, which provided $1 million of the $22 millon invested, filed its lawsuit in 2005, originally seeking financial information that it had been denied by Thompson and the board of directors representing the investors. (The Dispatch newspaper was sold to GateHouse Media in mid-2015 and is no longer the property of Dispatch Printing.)

The receiver, Ira Kane, was appointed by the court in 2013 to take over the companies associated with the salvage operation in an effort to recover some proceeds for the investors.

"After all these years, justice has finally prevailed," Kane said after the jury awards were announced.

Keith Golden, one of Thompson's attorneys, said "there are several appealable issues," but it will be up to his client to decide whether to appeal the jury's decision.

It is uncertain how much of the awards will ever be seen by investors. Evidence presented during the trial indicated that Thompson had an off-shore account in the Cook Islands that, as of 2009, contained $4.16 million. He also took possession of 500 coins, worth an estimated $2.5 million, that had been minted from gold bars recovered from the wreck and has refused to cooperate with court orders to reveal their location.

His ongoing lack of cooperation has kept him in a federal prison since 2015, when he was arrested after failing to show up for a federal court hearing and after spending 30 months in hiding in Florida. He pleaded guilty to criminal contempt and was sentenced to two years in prison, but a federal judge ruled that Thompson will be held until he follows through on a promise to help locate the coins and other assets for investors.

The attorney for Dispatch Printing, Steven Tigges, and for the receiver, Quintin Lindsmith, presented evidence of what they described as a systematic effort by Thompson to mislead, lie and not inform investors about the operation's finances and the whereabouts of its assets, including the coins.

Thompson attorneys Golden and Adam Karl argued that Dispatch Printing pursued litigation to punish Thompson after it and other disgruntled investors failed in an effort to take control of the salvage partnership away from him.

The jurors heard testimony from 10 witnesses, including about 10 hours of testimony by Thompson, over parts of four days.

jfutty@dispatch.com

@johnfutty

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